ECREA16-Abstract

Thursday, November 10

1 6 : 3 0 – 1 8 : 0 0

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Environmental Viewertariat in the 2015 British General Election: Who and What Was Hot About a Frozen Subject

G. Moreno

, T. Burger

Northumbria University, Media and Communication Design, Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom

Television and newspapers have long been the dominant media during election campaigns. Social media platforms like Facebook andTwitter have however

become of growing importance for political participation, campaigning, and debate in mediatized western societies. The notion that these new platforms

for expression both enable politicians and political parties to inform and engage with constituents, whilst offering marginalized groups a place to raise

their voices and organise for political change has been of particular interest. Explorations of social media as means to democratize the public sphere have

however been countered by research highlighting that social media reproduce the political cultures of elites, rather than level the playing field for citizens

and organisations from outside. Since politics and public debate play a key role in deciding how societies will react to climate change it is necessary to

further explore the extent to which alternative societal sectors utilise digital media to participate in the political arena. In the UK 2015 general election,

environmental issues such as climate change and fracking have been largely absent from traditional media. Our paper focuses on the ways in which de‑

bate on ‘the environment’ was appropriated by citizens via the Twittersphere during the UK General Election in 2015. It has been argued that Twitter can

strengthen the perception and recognition of polarized climate change views and that climate change discussion on Twitter seems to create echo chambers

of like-minded users rather than foster public deliberation. While those findings seem to limit the prospects of Twitter as being a place for public debate,

research on climate change and social media is scarce and largely concentrated on microblogging as a tool of organised political institutions and individuals.

Our work therefore highlights the significance of Twitter as a proxy to discuss the ways in which issues get onto the public and political agenda outside

the mechanisms of formal news flows. We collected 9,000 tweets on issues such as climate change, fracking, and flooding during a period in the run up to

the UK general election, in order to analyse the role of Twitter for public debate. This allowed us to assess the scope of the public debate, the development

of issues over time, and the range of actors involved. Early results indicate that while Twitter is indeed a place for established actors such as professional cli‑

mate change activists and local anti-fracking campaigns, it also works as a‘training ground’for a range of civil society actors and citizens. It will be discussed

whether in this case Twitter must be described as an ‘elite’platform or as an extension of the public sphere.

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The (Dis)Continuation of Scottish Nationalism? The Scottish National Party and the New Radical Left

R.M. Engström

Linnaues University, Department of Languages, Växjö, Sweden

In 2013 the Scottish government announced its intention to hold a referendum on independence from the United Kingdom. In so doing, they embarked

on a difficult political and communicative enterprise that would have great impact on the political landscape. Following a steady increase in nationalist

support, the early 2000s saw a transformation of Scottish politics with the political success and concomitant government formation by the centre-left Scot‑

tish National Party (SNP). The SNP was the driving force behind the independence referendum, but the referendum also saw the emergence of a plethora

of new pro-independence organizations. Many of these organizations were notably left-wing, youth-oriented and emphasized radical forms of democracy

and grassroots participation. This development has led researchers to claim that these new organizations herald the end of the relatively young nationalist

hegemony in Scotland and the beginning of a new radical political climate. This presentation investigates the notion that Scottish politics is about to enter

a post-nationalist stage, and especially one of the most prominent new organizations associated with this change, namely National Collective (NC). Noted

for its rapid growth and spread, NC is a cultural movement emphasizing the empowerment of the younger electorate. NC attracted thousands of young

people with little previous experience of politics and has been noted for its spontaneous and performance-like campaigning. During the days leading up to

the referendum in September 2014, interviews were conducted with representatives of the SNP and NC in the field, focusing on their core ideological beliefs

and communicative and campaigning strategies. The interviews focused on the representatives’ideological motives for campaigning for independence and

their experiences of campaigning strategies in order to ascertain how they communicated with potential voters regarding the benefits of independence.

The analysis of the interview data concentrates on the main motivational discourses used by the participants and was performed using a morphological

approach. This approach consists in breaking down ideology in its constituent parts in order to ascertain how certain political ideas are prioritized on

behalf of other ideas, as well as to see how one group ideology overlaps with another group ideology. The findings suggest that the SNP and NC mobilized

the electorate by focusing on similar political issues, and by invoking similar visions of an independent Scotland.While there is a great deal of discursive and

ideological overlap between the SNP and NC, the two organizations clearly imagine different target groups, which had a direct bearing on their strategic

campaigning. This paper suggests that rather than marking the end of nationalist influence in Scottish politics, a newmovement such as NC in fact comple‑

ments nationalist forces through its strategic communication with the younger sections of the electorate.